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Between 16 and 20 June 2015 Vreerwerk will again organise a series of webinars on transgender and intersex developments on the human rights level. We will hold three webinars of two hours on the following themes:

Recent developments in the European trans* and intersex theatre. Where do they stand rights-wise? What can we learn from them to advance our national cause?

How can you use the UN to engage your government? What can we learn from good practices on both trans* and intersex?

How to use the Yogyakarta Principles of human rights on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE) issues in national advocacy?

The costs are 89 (incl VAT) euro per webinar, 239 (incl. VAT) for all three.

When interested send an e-mail to vreerwerk@xs4all.nl and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Or fill this form:

April 2015 is for trans* and intersex human rights in Europe a rather fortunate month. On the legal level that is. It still rains trans murders and suicides, not to speak of other atrocities. Which – cynically maybe – show precisely what we need that legislation for.

I want your attention for two cities in two countries for two different important advances. The first town is Valletta, on Malta. The other is Geneva in Switzerland. And then for two more where no less important stones fell in Oslo, Norway and Strasbourg, France. Continue reading

The United Nations have labelled April 7 World Health Day. A day to pay explicit attention to health issues. Since our focus is trans* and inter*, or differently (and more universally) put: gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, this is what we will look into.

Luxury

For transgender persons, or trans* people, or gender variant/diverse people, having a good health is often a luxury they cannot afford. Because they are not recognized as a group in need of specific health care (or even health care at). In many parts of the world including enlightened Europe, wishing to adapt your body’s sex characteristics is a frowned upon phenomenon. Both the general public and the medical sector may despise you for your needs.

Insurance

The next issue is getting the health care covered by insurance. Of the countries that provide health care to relieve the plight of trans* people, most cover maybe the ‘basics’ and then still often on extraneous conditions. These so-called basics are not by definition what the trans* person asks. Because being trans* does not only concern those people who need to ‘switch’ genders for their well-being, but every trans* person who is in need of any health care to increase their well-being with their gendered and sexed body. Some people may need hormone replacement therapy because their natal sex hormones don’t agree with them. Some need to only get rid of (the largest part of) their breasts. And given the choice, the percentage of trans* women that insists in getting rid of their original genitals is not that high. In the Netherlands only 12% of the whole trans* population (estimated at 2 to 3% of the population) decides for medical assistance. Communication from Spain indicates a similar percentage.

Fate

In most countries doctors don’t agree with prescribing hormones or doing surgery upon a patient unless a psychologist has done a thorough assessment of the care user’s mental health and observes the presence of “Gender Identity Disorder” or “Gender Dysphoria”. That process of establishing the diagnosis can easily aggravate the presupposed dysphoria (a word that actually refers to severe depression, and by virtue of that is not a good term). When left to the discretion of a prejudiced medical profession, that has no good understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity (and expression) phenomena, they will try to explain things away, but not legitimize the existence of gender diversity. The higher the level of morals conservatism, the higher the chance trans* people will meet this fate and only can progress medically assisted gender transition with a diagnosis of severe mental disorder.

Standards

Also in the progressive Netherlands you cannot easily enter medically assistance with gender transition. Where the Standards of Care for transgender health care states that informed consent is the way to go, the Amsterdam gender team still insists in a lengthy psychological evaluation and in case you may encounter practical trouble (intensifying ‘dysphoria’, growing life problems for non conforming ..) they may prolong evaluation or when already on HRT, suggest you to lower the dosage. As if that were the issue. Doing so leads to iatrogenic increase of mental instability. Which in turn leads to a decrease of the patient’s health.

Assessment

Another issue that weirdly is coupled to a trans* person’s health, is Legal Gender Recognition and the preconditions for that. In Europe 33 countries require psychological or medical interventions before recognizing a trans* person’s wish to change their gender assignment; 19 still require sterilization and genital realignment. Only two states in the world give the possibility to change one’s gender assignment with no strings attached: Argentina, and Malta. Denmark comes next, but still requires a half-year wait (and being over 18 y.o.). Everywhere else, where there are regulations, psychological assessment is the least invasive requirement, also in the Netherlands. Only two to three countries take trans* people seriously. And only one of these has provisions for a non-male/non-female reassignment.

Malta

Laws and regulations can have an important effect on trans and inter* persons’ well-being. They regulate the conditions for legal gender change, for medical assistance: which interventions are available at all, which ones are insurance funded? For intersex (or inter*, because it can also be an identity and those more ‘intergender’ and the asterisk in both inter* and trans* indicates a vastness in possibilities). Only one state in the whole world, one state out of more than 192 states, prohibits explicitly that sex characteristics get adapted to a social ideal of having genitals clearly distinguishable as male or female. Everywhere but in Malta this is still legal, and standing practice.Progress

Engaging in these usually non-consensual surgeries is a gross violation of a person’s dignity and personal autonomy. Intersex genital mutilations – usually performed on minors – equals forced sterilisation of women for belonging to the wrong ethnic group (forbidden by the European Human Rights Court en the UN!). When asked a paediatrician they sometimes agree that in the past many errors have been made, but nowadays medical science is so much better that the results are incomparable with the sorry state of technique and results of twenty-five years ago. By using that argument they still deny people their right to bodily autonomy, to decide for themselves about their body. They preclude being OK with those genitals (or gonads or chromosomes), with their body and their life.

Power

The health of a person considered physically or mentally deviant is the explicit object of power play, of medical, psychiatric and legal paternalistic laws and practices. That goes against the most basic rights and that alone already is pretty bad for one’s health.

To fight for your rights, you first have to know them. Vreerwerk offers an opportunity for this. On December 9, just before Human Rights Day, we will start with an online training in human rights concerning trans* and intersex issues.

In four webinars you will get to know the human rights systems of Europe and the UN and get a first idea how to use them. What constitutes human rights? How can I use them? Are trans* and intersex people protected? Can we complain to Brussels (EU) or to Strasbourg (Council of Europe)? How to find your way in the UN? What protection is there? What are the Yogyakarta Principles and how useful are they? How to implement UN critique on the national level? These and other questions are the topics of a series of webinars (seminars given over the Internet) to give activists and students a first plunge in the deep sea of human rights for trans* and intersex people.

This training is limited to trans* and intersex because there is already quite some info and many active NGOs on gay and lesbian issues, but there are hardly enough trans* or inter* activists who know how to use the UN or other human rights systems.

“Know your rights” is an entry-level training. No detailed knowledge is needed (though it may work to your advantage). In principle the training will be given on Tuesdays in two-hour webinars.

On request we can discuss other systems (African Human and Peoples Rights Commission, InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, ASEAN) in extra webinars.

The costs are 150 euros (ex 21% VAT) per participant. Subsidized (richer) NGOs are to pay double, to enable less well off individuals to participate.

For registration or more info, you can send an e-mail to vreerwerk-at-xs4all-dot-nl (preventing the spam monsters that found me ;)

On June 10 we will start the next online training “Fighting for trans* and intersex equality through human rights”. In five bi-weekly two hour webinars you will get information on the following themes:

You will learn how to use mostly the UN system and the European human rights system to influence the national government on implementing obligations they accepted by acceding to human rights treaties.

We will work with both material at hand and look forward to opportunities and obstructions for getting our rights realised. We will look at what can be done with existing material for local implementation and at the same time see that human rights are not a universal solution and have some inherent problems also.

The training comes at €150 (incl. VAT) for individual activists. If you come as a (funded) organization, the tariff is double to enable less well-off activists to participate. If this is still problematic, do send an e-mail and we’ll figure out a solution.

For more detailed info or alternatively participating in a live training, see this page. For registration or questions best send an e-mail to vreerwerk@xs4all.nl.

From the beginning of 2014 Vreerwerk will offer a training in human rights with a focus on transgender and intersex issues. This course aims at staff of government and inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations, students and activists interested in trans* and intersex issues that need a basis in human rights for their work, but are not looking for an expensive academic course. Continue reading

For some time now the German decision to require parents of a child with ambiguous genitals to register their child without a sex marker and without protection or time limit, is making the news. To the growing displeasure of intersex activists.

Displeasure because intersex activists have not been consulted and if consulted would have advised against this law. Because of the utter confusion about a “third gender” or “third sex”. Because the way it works, parents and doctors will be inclined more to cut up the childs genitals instead of less. Without education or protection: who wants a sex ambiguous child?

To first tend to the misunderstanding about Germany that the press still furthers. Germany does not have third gender option. Not even or intersex infants. If a child is born in a German hospital (or at home) and on grounds of the genitals its se cannot be defined without a doubt, the requirement is to leave the sex marker (gender marker) open in the birth certificate. There is no time limit to it.

Where the power to decide on the childs sex lies in medical hands the tendency will be to try to prevent any ambiguity, out of professional pride (“Look! We can fix this!”). Be it through prenatal hormone therapy (with certain intersex conditions the mother gets off-label prescription of dexamethasone), surgical or postnatal hormone treatment prescription Or even abortion. Preimplantation Diagnostics and other screenings are unwelcome interventions where it concerns intersex “discovery”.

This will not help prospecting parents in handling the body diversity of their child. The most friendly it will be frowned upon and run into problems when for example registering it for Kindergarten. Given the ttal lack of support in society, the enforcing of a sex and gender binary everywhere in life, already the child’s start will be complicated. How will it be treated by family (“we don’t now what it is”), in Kindergarten where everything is pink and blue ..

The way it works, intersexed children (they fit within a diversity of bodies, but through medical scrutiny they intersexed, made intersex or having a “Disorder of Sex Development” to make it worse) only get the worst of possibilities, not the best.

Would anti-discrimination legislation help then: Well, yes. Though there is a risk of making thngs more complicated to keep the system. Instead of creating a limited extra category, German government could have had the courage to open it up for everyone to have no sex/gender marker in the birth certificate and other documents. At least let it die out. So that from end 2013 all children would be free of a sex/gender marker, and after some years that population will have grown and gender registration starts dying out with the deceased.

A word about terminology here: usually we speak of gender marker, but it happens at birth on the view of the genitals of a baby. The “no sex marker” solution the german chose and others are eyeing, shows that sex and gender are constantly conflated. Because of specific genitals, a specific gender identity and gender role is attributed too the child. naturalistic thinking with biologistic arguments then takes care of the rest: your gender is supposed to stay the same through life, apart from errors. in classic legislation the legal problem trans people present is solutioned along these “error” lines. Apparently the person develops differently than we expected, so we grant the right the correct this error. Another reason the Argentinean solution for gender recognition is so revolutionary.

The solution to havng a two option system and people that do not fit in can theoretically be solutioned by introducing a new category, or leave the field open. But that leaves two important questions: is it the best solution, and waht do the people involved say of it? There is a saying “Nihil nobis sin nobis”, nothing about us without us. Decent politics involves the group that has to benefit or suffers from a certain solution. This has not happened here. Elsewhere, in the Australasian region third gender solutions have been introduced through the explcit wish of part of the population. Not in Germany however.

What would be the best solution to the problem of having non fitting categories? One could opt for opening up a real third sex/gender category, indicated with an X on all official documentation (this is the internationally recognized solution from the ICAO). But for legsilation there must be a need and it must be proportionate in its effect. In Europe (Council and Union) there also is the equality principle. New categories , new distinctions may only be introduced in legislations where equalilty is protected. In Germany this is definitely not the case, neither in Australia where inter* people cannot marry a man or a woman since they are not one. The very least to do is introduce protection against discrimination. If not it is a solution on unequal footing and against the equality principle.

Next there is the risk of wanting to create even more categories. Why not one or inter* and one or trans*? Sensile lawyers will rejext this idea since it makes no sense to discriminate between so many not really essential traits. Which in turn brings us to the question: if continuing to create categories is senseless, do the existing categories make sense? Does sex registration in the civil registry make sense? Medically speaking, sex registration might make sense. But the civil registry is not for medical information. With equality legislation covering more and more terrain, inequality between men and women seen as a somewhat retarded way of thinking (although still very much alive), what is the use of registering? Just because bodies are different and they have different roles? That is hardly a good argument.

The best way then is to simply abolish sex/gender registration at the civil registry. Make those categories moot, uninteresting, without importance. It is not about abolishing men and women ro male and female identities, it is just about quitting to enforce them. Most reasons to keep the status quo come from the same realm as objections against marriage equality between genders or the possiblity to change genders, sc. moral conservatism.

Of course between act and dream stand laws and moral objections – to quote the Dutch poet Willem Elsschot – but that should not be insurmountable.

Vreerwerk

A Dutch name for thorough LGBTI advocacy and gender education. More than ten years on the theatre of transgender and human rights with an extra-ordinary personal story, I am the 'tranny' for your cause.